caught a band of ten of them swimming a river on logs; they had
picked them all off from the bank with their carbines. Once, when Kalvar
Dard and Analea had been scouting alone, they had come upon a dozen of
them huddled around a fire and had wiped them out with a single grenade.
Once, a large band of Hairy People hunted them for two days, but only
twice had they come close, and both times, a single shot had sent them
all scampering. That had been after the bombing of the group around the
fire. Dard was convinced that the beings possessed the rudiments of a
language, enough to communicate a few simple ideas, such as the fact
that this little tribe of aliens were dangerous in the extreme.

* * * * *

There were Hairy People about now; for the past five days, moving
northward through the forest to the open grasslands, the people of
Kalvar Dard had found traces of them. Now, as they came out among the
seedling growth at the edge of the open plains, everybody was on the
alert.

They emerged from the big trees and stopped among the young growth,
looking out into the open country. About a mile away, a herd of game was
grazing slowly westward. In the distance, they looked like the little
horse-like things, no higher than a man's waist and heavily maned and
bearded, that had been one of their most important sources of meat. For
the ten thousandth time, Dard wished, as he strained his eyes, that
somebody had thought to secure a pair of binoculars when they had
abandoned the rocket-boat. He studied the grazing herd for a long time.

The seedling pines extended almost to the game-herd and would offer
concealment for the approach, but the animals were grazing into the
wind, and their scent was much keener than their vision. This would
prelude one of their favorite hunting techniques, that of lurking in the
high grass ahead of the quarry. It had rained heavily in the past few
days, and the undermat of dead grass was soaked, making a fire-hunt
impossible. Kalvar Dard knew that he could stalk to within easy
carbine-shot, but he was unwilling to use cartridges on game; and in
view of the proximity of Hairy People, he did not want to divide his
band for a drive hunt.

"What's the scheme?" Analea asked him, realizing the problem as well as
he did. "Do we try to take them from behind?"

"We'll take them from an angle," he decided. "We'll start from here and
work in, closing on them at the rear of the